‘If I showed up at your church, somebody other than Jesus would be happy to see me’

Co-Moderators, Stated Clerk team up to share their insights during worship at the Presbyterian Center Chapel on Wednesday

by Mike Ferguson | Presbyterian News Service

From left, the Rev. Jihyun Oh, the Rev. CeCe Armstrong and the Rev. Tony Larson sing a hymn during worship Wednesday in the Chapel at the Presbyterian Center in Louisville, Kentucky. (Photo by Rich Copley)

LOUISVILLE — With Ephesians 2:10 as their scriptural basis, the co-moderators of the 226^th General Assembly, the Rev. CeCe Armstrong and the Rev. Tony Larson, joined the Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Rev. Jihyun Oh, to lead a hybrid worship service Wednesday in the Chapel at the Presbyterian Center in Louisville, Kentucky. One by one, the three recently elected denominational leaders spoke on “Created,” “Called” and “Commissioned.”

Created

Put your hand in front of your face, Armstrong suggested. Inhale and then exhale, blowing air at the hand. “Do you feel anything? That means you have breath in you, and breath means you’ve been created by God,” she said.

The Rev. CeCe Armstrong is co-moderator of the 226th General Assembly. (Photo by Rich Copley)

Genesis 1 tells us that everything God created is good. “When we consider being created by God, it’s all right if we declare, ‘That’s good!’” Armstrong said. “Friends, I want you to acknowledge that you have been fearfully and wonderfully made and to acknowledge that you have been made good. That ought to make you walk different.”

“I encourage you to be a good creation of God and wear the smile that proves that’s so,” she said. “To God be the glory for the great things God is doing.”

Called

Larson spoke about a recent time and an unlikely place to which he and his wife, Heather, were called: a dive bar in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where a trivia night had been organized.

The tables were all taken, and so the couple found their place at the bar, where they began chatting with a gentleman whose hippie parents had named him “Talon.”

Leaving out some of Talon’s colorful language — Talon had readily admitted to the Larsons he was ‘tripping’ on mushrooms — Larson said Talon had pegged the couple as a teacher and a mechanic, despite the fact that the co-moderator wore his clerical collar to the bar that night. “Not in this life,” he told Talon.

During the two hours of the trivia contest, people would walk in and out of the bar, Larson said. Some hadn’t had particularly good days. One person told him, “I’m Catholic. I go to Mass every Sunday. People fuss at me all the time. They say, ‘but we see what you’re doing on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.’”

“I go every Sunday, and I get forgiven, but the only person happy to see me there is Jesus.” Then he asked Larson, “Would I be welcome in your church?”

The Rev. Tony Larson is co-moderator of the 226th General Assembly. (Photo by Rich Copley)

“I said, ‘Of course you’d be welcomed at our church,’” Larson said, telling the man about the ministry of Trinity Presbyterian Church of Surfside Beach, South Carolina, including “our ministry for those in recovery, our ministry to children and families, and our fundamental ministry to people who pick up from some place on the map at this stage of their life and come here and generally have no connections, no roots. They have left their roots behind, and we help those rootless people find roots in the church.”

“I just really get the sense talking to the two of you,” the man replied, “that if I showed up at your church, somebody other than Jesus would be happy to see me.”

At that moment, Larson knew why he and his wife “were meant to be there, to be salt and light, to meet the character named Talon who was actively tripping on mushrooms, who wants community, who wants holy community.” It turned out Talon was a drummer who had played for some big names in the music industry.

“We don’t know,” Larson said of why we are called. “We are called to be in spaces where we are, and to be the very presence of Christ to whoever might be there. Thanks be to God.”

Commissioned

For many people in worship on Wednesday, the term “commission” has a specific meaning, said Oh, who started her duties as Stated Clerk on Aug. 5. There are commissions, both judicial and administrative, and commissioners to assemblies “who have been given power and authority to speak on and act on behalf of a particular body of people.”

The Rev. Jihyun Oh, Sated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), speaks in the Chapel at the Presbyterian Center  on Wednesday. (Photo by Rich Copley)

We can think of “commissioned” as “being given the power and authority to speak on and act on behalf of Christ Jesus our Lord, who has called us to be salt and light in the world,” the Stated Clerk said.

Being commissioned can also mean “being taken off of standby, being taken off the sidelines to places where God is calling us.” Ephesians 2:10 calls us “God’s handiwork,” which got Oh to thinking about “what it means to be commissioned to that work. The person creating that handiwork is thinking about a particular context or purpose when the work is commissioned. There is a particular thing we are to be doing in the world.” There can be “a sense of joy that emerges from that commission.”

And, Oh said, sometimes, as Larson had noted, “handiwork is just there to be present, to be a reminder of the Creator, the creator of that handiwork’s presence in that space to be a sign of joy, a sign of love, a sign of creativity, a sign of energy in that space, to embody the creator’s presence in that space.”

“We don’t always have to do, but we can be,” Oh said. “We are created, called and commissioned. Thanks be to God. Amen.”

The Rev. Jihyun Oh is bookended by the heads of the co-moderators, the Rev. Tony Larson and the Rev. CeCe Armstrong. (Photo by Rich Copley)

In between each of the three talks, worshipers sang a verse of “Take My Life.” Phillip Morgan, Associate for Music in the Office of Theology & Worship, contributed his gifts on the piano.

Toward the end of the service, those in worship recited a prayer that included these words:

“We ask you for shared discernment as we seek to align ourselves with your will for your church.

“We are grateful for the relationships we have developed and are developing, and we pray that those ties would continue to grow, that we may be the body of Christ.

“So, we leave this place, knowing we never leave your side, and knowing that we have been created, called and commissioned to do your will for your people. It is in Jesus’ name that we pray. Amen.”